


the places we've been, the people we've become

by pneumatics



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Homophobic Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 12:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14237454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pneumatics/pseuds/pneumatics
Summary: He’s twenty years old and he’s thrown himself into a family where he’s as lost as they are unforgiving.





	the places we've been, the people we've become

There’s an unspoken rule in the Minyard family. There are many.

Nicky comes to realize that mostly everything is unspoken, and it’s a favor because the alternative is edging careful words towards Andrew and hoping they don’t warrant violent behavior. He wishes he was joking, but the last time he tried joking, he almost got stabbed.

He’s twenty years old and he’s thrown himself into a family where he’s as lost as they are unforgiving. He doesn’t even know if he should call it that - a _family_ \- because that sounds too permanent for something as fractured as they are. Andrew and Aaron are cold acquaintances, distant at best, and he doesn’t want to regret coming back for them, but regret is the only thing they make easy for him. Which _sucks_.

“I want to love them,” he says, on the phone with Erik after a particularly silent day, “And I _do_ love them...”

“But what if it isn’t enough?” Erik finishes, because he knows Nicky doesn’t want to say it himself.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Nicky lets out a breath. “They’re just kids, Erik. I don’t know anything about _kids_.” He’s throwing together dinner in the kitchen, because he cooks for three now and it’s foreign and strange and choking him from the inside.

“But you know what it’s like to feel abandoned,” Erik says. It’s a gentle reminder of Nicky’s own high school experiences. “They need you, whether they act like it or not.”

“I was a lot more manageable at seventeen,” Nicky jokes weakly. Erik’s soft laugh makes him smile.

“Don’t give up on them,” he says, and there’s a familiar weight behind those words. Nicky nods even though Erik can’t see him.

“Yeah. I won’t.” And he hangs up without saying ‘I love you’ because he’s beginning to doubt if he knows what that really means.

It takes time for Nicky to make any progress, because Andrew is stone-faced and unmoving but Aaron is desperate for the family he lost, and the two of them are a rock and a hard place and Nicky cannot breathe. He cries too - a lot more than he would like to admit - behind closed doors and around corners, choking down sobs before plastering a smile on his face and turning himself into the guardian they _need_ , not the one he is.

Nicky isn’t stupid either. He notices the pills and the needles, sees the track marks and the way the skins pulls underneath Aaron’s eyes. He notices Andrew’s silent surveillance, pursed lips and quiet deliberation. It’s such an obvious cry for help but Aaron’s battle is within himself, and Nicky can only watch because he’s afraid of making it worse.

(He’s afraid of interfering with Andrew’s plans because he _knows_ what happened to Aunt Tilda.)

(There have been knives from nowhere pressed against his throat far too many times).

No matter what he tries, Nicky can’t save Aaron from himself and he sure as hell can’t save him from Andrew. Watching Andrew force Aaron into withdrawal sends every nerve in his body on high alert, but he lets it happen.

And Aaron is half alive in a ghost of a body, but he’s _alive_. Alive and sober.

So he allows that small spark of hope inside of him grow. Because maybe, just maybe, they’d survive this.

-

It comes at Eden’s Twilight, when the spark turns to fire and surviving is the only thing on Nicky’s mind. It’s late, and his hands are sticky with the vodka that didn’t make it to his mouth, and it’s _really hot in here_ , so he peels his ass off his seat and walks outside. The air stings against his bare skin and he silently curses the fact that his shirt feels more like a wet rag. Aaron had kept the shots coming while Roland and Andrew were on break, and Nicky feels it catching up to him in waves of heat.

“I need to get laid,” he mutters and he’s only half-joking because it’s been months since he’s seen Erik in person. “Don’t suppose any of you boys want to show me a good time?” he says to a passing cluster of what looks like the outlines of a few eligible bachelors.

“What the hell did you say to me?” one of the outlines demands, and he’s a little more frat boy in focus now. Nicky shakes his head and puts his hands up.

“Nothing, babe.” And that should’ve been it, except Nicky is suddenly faced with a little over six feet of drunken collegiate athlete.

“It better be nothing,” Frat Boy snarls, and Nicky smells sour beer on his breath.

“You’re getting a little in my space,” he says coyly, because he’s drunk and he doesn’t give a damn about consequences. “Forward. I like it.” Frat Boy grunts with disgust, and then Nicky’s back hits a wall, and there’s a fist in his face.

His first instinct is to raise his arms and protect himself, but then he goes limp, because he’s dealt with this before - he can wait it out. Except it doesn’t stop.

It doesn’t stop, and Frat Boy has friends.

Nicky’s on the ground, and there’s gravel on his tongue, and he can see their boots. He can feel each one hit his stomach and he can feel the crunch of breaking bones. It feels a little easier to go numb with each kick, every swing accentuated with -

“Fucking _fag_.”

So he closes his eyes and pictures Erik in his head, says a little goodbye, prays, and lets go.

But that’s when it stops. It’s a jarring pull back to reality, and the pain rushes into his body ready to drown him. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, and he’s alone, and then Frat Boy’s bloody face makes an appearance on the ground next to him with a sick _thud_.

Nicky forces himself to roll over only to witness Andrew send another body to the floor. There’s a third man behind him and Nicky’s eyes widen, but Andrew merely throws another punch with such a savage rage behind his eyes that Nicky is afraid. Volatility runs through Andrew’s bones like it’s the marrow giving them strength. Nicky supposes that Andrew is exactly what gives them _all_ strength - if strength were more an unhealthy dose of fear at every given moment. Having Andrew at his back is a blessing and a curse, knowing he’s equally as likely to defend Nicky as he is to simply kill him. But that’s what saves him. Andrew is what saves him.

He watches as Andrew proceeds to beat the living shit out of the men on the floor with precise, unmitigated wrath  - interrupted only by the security guards who pull Andrew off of them. He swings at them too and Nicky can’t speak, can’t move because Andrew is horrific but he is only thankful for it.

It’s later at the hospital when Andrew is in handcuffs and Aaron is pulling his hair out that Nicky wakes up. Andrew stands, and a policeman stands with him, and Andrew glares as he walks out of the room. Nicky tries to speak, but his throat is raw so he only manages to choke, gasp. Aaron stands at the edge of his bed. His knuckles are white and his eyes are deadened.

“He nearly killed them,” he says quietly. And then, “I called Erik.”

Nicky breathes.

-

The court case is a blur of lawyers and doctors and Erik holding him up with a look as he takes the witness stand. And then Andrew is home and there’s a prescription he has to remember to order, and Nicky wants to know what went wrong.

He knows it was broken from the beginning. They were broken from the beginning, but Andrew almost committed murder for him. Andrew _actually_ committed murder for Aaron. The lack of jail time isn’t as surprising as the fact that Nicky now categorically belongs in the list of people Andrew has almost killed for.

(What went wrong, he realizes, is that Andrew was caught.)

Everything is different now. Erik is back in Germany and Nicky has found his place. This - this shattered glass excuse of a family - is where he belongs and where he will stay. Aaron watches from the sidelines as Andrew’s mania overcomes him and Nicky is there every step of the way. The pocketknives give way to forks and scissors and for a while, it seems that every sharp object is Andrew-proofed. Nicky makes an effort to cook dinners that strictly require just spoons. And sometimes there are days where he has to gently wrench the prescription bottle from Aaron’s hands or put out a cigarette coming too close to melting the skin off Andrew’s hands.  

But he’s there. Unspoken rules are bullshit, he understands. There’s more to say. And Nicky says it all. It’s a strange realization that he needs them as much as they need him. But it fits. In their own twisted way, it fits. It’s what matters.

So when the day comes that David Wymack comes knocking, Nicky is on the phone with Erik after a quick skim of a contract that offers a lot more than they deserve.

“Palmetto State,” he says and it’s breathless because it’s a chance. It’s a chance for better.

“Go,” Erik says, and Nicky loves him so much for understanding, loves Aaron for agreeing, loves Andrew so much for allowing it.

“Thank you,” he says, and then hangs up and signs the ticket to the rest of their lives.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i love this boy.  
> i love this boy so much.  
> and i'm really proud of myself for finishing this fic because i love this boy.


End file.
